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Nicky Romero presents Protocol Recordings at ADE!

Last week we went to ADE and opened our week with Nicky Romero’s label-night at the iconic venue Melkweg. Protocol Recordings, founded in 2012 by Nicky Romero, mainly focuses on progressive house which genre of music is clearly on the rise in terms of popularity. We’ve never visited this label-night before, simply because there’s way too much to choose from at the opening-night of Amsterdam Dance Event.

As you can see from the time-table image above there are loads of big artists both in the Mainroom as in the Protocol Lab room aka the talent-area. Upon entering the venue, it was already quite busy. There was a big stand with brand-new Protocol Recordings merchandise, such as caps & jackets which looked pretty cool.

The Main Room

Obviously the first area that we just had to check out was the biggest one, the mainroom. While we walked in Raiden was handling the decks. Raiden has become a Protocol Recordings regular over the years and he’s actually from Asia. You might be familiar with him thanks to his sets at several Ultra Asia events, so to think that he actually had come all that way for a DJ set was quite special. His style fits perfectly to the label, because it’s fresh, melodic and progressive.

To our surprise the second room was quite full as well already and we checked out the last few minutes of Marc Benjamin,who we know very well thanks to 2 interviews with him. He’s often touring Asia right now and making a lot of new music, which was clearly appreciated by the crowd. French DJ/producer Mosimann, a guy that we knew by name but never actually saw performing, took over from Marc and seriously blew our minds. Not only was his intro super captivating, he also did his own vocals and it sounded really good.

Back at the Main Room StadiumX, a DJ/producer duo from Hungary, were absolutely killing it. Building up their set nicely with a lot of own work featuring gorgeous melodies and lyrics it was a pleasure for the crowd to dance to it. Deniz Koyu did a collab with Nicky Romero recently called ‘Paradise’ and obviously he played that. We personally got to know Deniz when he released ‘Tung’ about 7
years ago (oh how time flies!) and that got major attention within the entire music-scene. The moment when Deniz dropped some Swedish House Maffia music the crowd started screaming for more, clearly longing for the return of the Swedish trio which will finally happen in 2019!

Nicky Romero & friends

Around 2 o’clock the main man Nicky Romero was ready to close the party with a 3 hour-set and as is an ADE-tradition a bunch of surprise guests! As also happened last year he brought out a vocalist to do a track live, which was ‘Sun’s Gonna Rise’ together with StadiumX and vocalist Matluck. It’s always cool to see such a thing and it’s an easy crowd-pleaser. That was only the beginning though, because over the course of the 3 hours Nicky had he brought out W&W, Lucas & Steve and at that point it wasn’t known yet, the number 1 DJ of the world according to the DJ Mag top 100 poll; Martin Garrix!

Nicky Romero and the people signed to Protocol have made quite a lasting impression for us and we’re super convinced that the popularity of progressive house music is about to rise to the top in 2019. Don’t be surprised when you’ll see progressive house getting prime-time slots on all major festivals, because you heard it here first. Don’t be surprised either when we will visit Nicky’s label-night again next year, because this was a worthwhile experience!